Emirates Institute for Banking and Financial Studies (EIBFS) held a cybersecurity conference highlighting the growing cyber risks in the region.

The workshop attracted more than 30 mid-to-senior-level professionals from the financial services sector. Cybersecurity specialists from a range of consulting firms and financial establishments, including DarkMatter, BAE Systems and Kaspersky mapped the cyber threat scene in the region and shared best practices for protecting IT infrastructures.

Jamal Al Jassmi, general manager of EIBFS, said: "It is extremely important for our banks to raise their level of emergency response preparedness to protect data and mitigate risks so that they can guarantee maximum security for their individual and corporate customers and stakeholders."

He added: "Bankers are interested in gaining deeper insight into crucial cybersecurity issues, such as data confidentiality and privacy, securing electronic payment gateways, and building shields against distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. Our main purpose in organising this workshop was to highlight the most pressing challenges in this emerging field."

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Simon Goldsmith, head of Sales of Cyber Security and Financial Crime at BAE Systems, added: "In the past criminal gangs physically attacked banks to steal the money of the bank and its customers - a very dangerous business. But with significant levels of cyber-attacks targeted at banks in the UAE it is clear criminal gangs have realised it's less dangerous, less costly and potentially very lucrative to pay someone, who may not even be in the same country, to provide access to someone else's money from the relative safety of a computer desk.

He further added: "With this threat in mind, our research found disconnects between responses of C-suites and IT departments of leading businesses in the UAE. These disconnects create intelligence gaps for attackers to exploit."

Experts advised that attendees should prioritise the enhancements of their existing cybersecurity programs.